Poetry in the Raw
by sphinx01
Summary: A sparkling of this age should not possess any linguistic abilities yet. On the other hand, the very fact of the bitlet's presence on the Nemesis defied pretty much every definition of 'normal' Starscream had in his databanks. Part 3 of the "Project Synergy" series.


**Author's Note** : The last months have been very difficult for me, so I'm especially proud to finally get this oneshot posted :-) Please enjoy! Special thanks go once again to my beta reader dinogrrl, who is fantastic at keeping my grammar in line ;-)

 **Disclaimer** : I do not own The Transformers, and I do not make any money with this story.

* * *

 **Poetry in the Raw**

" _Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable."_

W. H. Auden

xxx

The never-ending motion of the deep sea waters reflected the shine of the Nemesis' emergency lights, painting gentle, blue-green patterns onto the floor. From his vantage point on the berth, Starscream watched the outrageously peaceful play of colors with all the peevishness he could muster.

It had of course been a mistake to spend the night cycle in his trine mates' quarters.

He'd taken the two dimsparks for a leisure flight - nothing fancy, mind you, just some easy trine flying. The sky was clear and the air serene, and afterwards they'd rested on an outlier a good distance away from the coast line, passing a cube of energon back and forth between them in companionable silence.

In retrospect, that was probably where he should have called it a day.

But then TC and 'Warp had asked him to spend the night, and though the two slaggers were a major pain in the afterburners, he had to give them some credit where the berth was concerned. So, after two good overloads and with both his trine mates' chassis a warm, solid weight against his folded wings, Starscream should by all rights be in the middle of a decent recharge cycle.

Except that he wasn't, because in the makeshift crib beneath the porthole, the little pest of a Seekerling was wide awake.

Not that Synergy was crying. The little fragger obviously had more sense than _that_. But for the last breem or so, he'd been cooing and chirring and babbling happily, telling Primus knew what silly little fairy stories to the ever-shifting light outside. Every now and then, elongated shadow beams would bounce from wall to wall when two stumpy legs were thrust into the air, and two tiny hands grabbed hold of two equally miniature thrusters.

Starscream huffed in exasperation and rolled onto his front, burying his face in the berth's mesh padding and offlining his audio receptors.

Ah. Finally. Blissful, silent darkness.

With a sigh, he snuggled deeper into the padding and finally initiated that well-deserved recharge cycle. His CPU reacted straightaway and began a proper shutdown procedure, which by default included the analysis of all data and short-term memory files stored in a bot's cache.

Before his mind's optic, Starscream saw the swaying shadows of miniscule sparkling thrusters, and a giggling newspark's voice echoed in his audios.

About a dozen different hydraulics whined in protest as he aborted his shutdown and jumped out of the berth. Sure enough, both the giggling and the kicking were still in full swing. He stalked across the room and gripped the edges of the crib with both hands. "You," he snarled, looming over the tiny bunk. "Will you shut the frag up?!"

Synergy fell silent and gazed up at him with big, guileless sparkling optics. Then a wide grin nearly split his faceplates in half; he reached out with both hands and resumed his babbling with unmistakable enthusiasm.

Starscream bit back a frustrated screech. He had, of course, only himself to blame. From the very first solar cycle, he'd been much too lenient with the little ankle biter, and what fool expected cooperative behavior from a sparkling, anyway? He pinched his nasal bridge with two fingers and turned away, intend on kicking Skywarp out of the berth to take care of the problem.

"Daaa!"

Starscream froze. Had that been - a glyph? He accessed his memory files, replayed the sound. Yes, indeed. There right before his sensors was a rather distorted but recognizable version of the first of his designation glyphs.

He spun back around to stare down at the wriggling newspark. "That's Commander Starscream to you," he growled.

Synergy peered up at him, mouthing his little fist. Then he giggled and started to kick his legs so vigorously the crib shook with it.

Starscream pondered him with a deep frown. A sparkling of this age should not possess any linguistic abilities yet. The initial, basic sets of glyphs were normally integrated together with the first frame upgrades, and as far as they could tell, Synergy was at least half a Terran stellar cycle away from that.

On the other hand, the very fact of the bitlet's presence on the Nemesis defied pretty much every definition of 'normal' Starscream had in his databanks.

He knelt down next to the crib and locked on to the sparkling's purple gaze. "Say 'Starscream'," he ordered.

Synergy became instantly quiet, obviously understanding that something was demanded from him. His little field extended, carrying obvious interest and such concentration a newspark was capable of. Starscream waited impatiently, but the more time passed, the brighter the Seekerlet's optics began to glow. His cooling fans clicked on, and the initial curiosity began to morph first into confusion, then into rapidly increasing stress.

"Alright, alright." Baby steps it was, then, and wasn't that just the ultimate irony. Starscream threaded a few soothing algorithms into his field before Synergy could reach his breaking point, counting the astroseconds it took the bitlet to relax. "Fine. Let's start from scratch, then. Say 'Star'."

He projected the glyph with such high resolution he might as well have been talking to a complete idiot. Simultaneously, he sent a small data package with a highly simplified guide on how to run the glyph through one's vocalizer to produce the proper sound.

Synergy scrunched up his tiny faceplates. His processor worked hard, humming audibly. His vocalizer whirred online.

"...Daa?"

"Star," Starscream repeated, pronouncing very clearly.

"Daar?"

" _Star_."

"Dar!" A wave of enthusiastic joy crashed into the Seekerling's field. He giggled and squirmed in unabashed delight, fans whirring with excitement. "Dar, Dar!" he crowed.

"Very good," Starscream praised. It was, of course, an exaggeration, but such were the burdens of command. From time to time, one had to make concessions to the limitations of one's subordinates.

Some more precious astroseconds he'd never get back ticked by while the sparkling celebrated his little victory. Out of pure habit, the frequencies for _quiet/attention_ crept into Starscream's field when the nonsense went on for too long - and were replaced by astonishment when Synergy stopped cooing and focused on him again. His small field flared and bumped against the older Seeker's expectantly.

Interesting. Maybe the little slagger wasn't completely beyond hope. "Alright. Let's see what you make of this one, shall we? Say 'Scream'."

It seemed that Synergy had taken a liking to the game, because he practically pounced onto the new glyph. This one was a sight more complex than the first had been, and predictably the sparkling struggled with it. Even Synergy himself cringed slightly when his first attempt resulted in barely more than a croak, and it took them three more tries to achieve an outcome that was at least remotely acceptable. Starscream drew a deep draught of air into his vents and filled his field with a patience he didn't feel.

"Fine. Whatever. Now, we take these two and put them together." He brought both his hands into the little one's field of vision, clasping his own fingers in a combining gesture for illustration. "Star-Scream."

"Daardeem!"

It sounded awful. It was a brutal violation of two glyphs that were intended to convey beauty, pride, and strength. And still Starscream sat in front of the crib as if turned to stone, unable to do more than stare at its tiny occupant. Synergy gazed back for a while, then, when no further entertainment was forthcoming, he returned to mouthing his little fist, and his field began to peter out into the unfocused white noise that was typical for a contended sparkling. He blinked his optics at his observer, and a strange emotion settled in Starscream's spark for which he found no entry in his dictionary files.

"Star?"

It took all of Starscream's willpower to abort the automatic process of charging his null ray guns. On the berth across the room, Skywarp had sat up and was staring at him intently, optics aglow with curiosity. "Did he just say your name?" he whispered.

In the tense moment that followed, Starscream pondered what would be the greater nuisance: the humiliation of telling Skywarp what had been going on, or explaining to Megatron that a member of his elite trine had mysteriously vanished.

"I prefer to call it a decent effort," he said indignantly, lowering his gun arm and pushing himself to his feet.

Skywarp hopped off the berth and tiptoed closer. His field practically buzzed with the thrill of this new discovery, and Starscream instinctively took a step away from his overzealous trine mate when Skywarp crouched down and peered into the cradle.

"Wow," he breathed. "Two glyphs, at his age! That's fraggin' amazing. Hey, we must've found the cleverest bitlet in the universe! Are you a clever little Seeker? Yes, you are! Yes, you are!"

Starscream fought down a surge of secondhand embarrassment as his trine mate reached into the crib and tickled the newspark's feet, which made Synergy coo happily. "Well, aren't we lucky," he sneered.

"Aw, don't listen to him," Skywarp said and wriggled his fingers in front of Synergy's optics, laughing when the little one tried to catch them. "Can you say 'Skywarp', Synnie? Can you say that?"

"For crying out loud, 'Warp," Starscream snapped. "Get that thing to recharge already so we can call it a night! One of us is on early shift tomorrow, and I know for sure it's not you!"

"You're such a spoilsport, you know," Skywarp pouted. Still, even as he spoke his field frequencies shifted into a pattern which they had found to have a tranquilizing effect on Synergy.

After the unfamiliar toils of coherent speech, it didn't take long for the bitlet's optics to dim and eventually offline. Four or five kliks later, Synergy had fallen into deep recharge, his ventilation system rattling slightly as it worked - a glitch Hook had not yet managed to fix. But somehow, the little sound seemed to complete the scenario rather than to interrupt it, and to his great astonishment, Starscream found himself thinking that watching the Seekerlet recharge was a strangely peaceful experience.

"Hey, Star," Skywarp said. "How come we never had one of our own?"

Of course, peaceful moments tended to be short-lived whenever 'Warp was around, and _what had the glitch just asked him?!_

"'Cause the Pit will freeze over before I bear the offspring of two numbskulls," he growled, low and dangerous.

"I could carry," Skywarp explained patiently. "Or TC."

"And I could run you backwards through a trash compactor, I could!"

"When the two of you have finished bonding," a voice said from across the room, "I'd suggest that you both come back to berth and get some recharge."

They both wheeled around to look at the speaker. Thundercracker was lying on his side, wings folded elegantly up against the wall, and hadn't even onlined his optics. Skywarp huffed in amusement.

"Don't get your engine running hot, TC," he said, casting a sly glance at Starscream. "We've already got Screamer for that."

There were several possible ways to react to this, but they all retreated to the background of Starscream's processor when his trine mate lifted the recharging sparkling out of his cradle. "And what in the Pit are you doing?"

Skywarp blinked at him. "Oh, sorry. You wanna go another round?"

"Most certainly not!"

"Alright, then." And without further ado, he climbed onto the berth and settled down with a happy chirr, folded wings pressed against Thundercracker's chest plates and Synergy cradled comfortably in his arms.

Starscream stood rooted to the spot, speechless. That was definitely going too far.

It was one thing if his trine mates decided to take in a foundling. Everyone was entitled to a hobby. But to include said foundling into their trine bonding activities was a different matter. That was an _eyrie thing_.

"You coming?" Skywarp asked.

Over his trine mate's shoulder strut, Starscream saw Thundercracker's optics come online. Their gazes met and locked, holding each other for a long moment. Then TC raised his arm and held out his hand.

Pointedly ignoring the proffered appendage, Starscream stepped over to the berth and lowered himself onto its surface with all the considerable grace his frame held. He did not simply fold up his wings like the other two had done, but performed a rather complex micro-transformation which created the illusion of his wings melting into his backstruts - an impressive sight to behold, he knew. Then he laid down, facing away from his trine mates.

"If that thing so much as touches me," he hissed, "I'll have you both scrape the waste disposal units with your glossae for the next ten vorns, so help me Primus!"

"Relax, Starscream," Skywarp replied with a hint of smugness in his voice. "He's not gonna bite you."

Starscream refused to deign a more eloquent answer to this than an annoyed huff. Instead, he opted to focus on the bright side as he settled into his preferred recharge position: At least it was quiet now. He could sense his trine mates' fields in his back, keeping a polite distance but with their frequencies still open and welcoming, in case he should change his mind. And within those two fields, like a miniscule bubble ensconced by two larger ones, rested that of the Seekerlet, happy and warm and humming gently in his recharge.

With a sigh, Starscream relaxed into the mesh padding and initiated his shutdown protocols. Oh, well. He'd endured worse.

Before his offline optics, a dozen tiny, mutilated versions of his designation glyphs began a happy little round dance, but somehow the image amused him more than it irked him. And the sweet sensation behind his chest plates was most likely nothing more than a minor glitch in one of his subsystems. There'd be plenty of time to have Hook patch that up tomorrow.

 _*Fin*_


End file.
